Check out our photo gallery from tonight’s show HERE

Anticipation is so great for Death Cab For Cutie’s Tivoli performance that tickets cannot be had for love nor money tonight. Well, there is e-bay. If you’re one of those people who bought a ticket for $160, you paid over the odds. Sorry. And if you were the seller, in the words of comedian Bill Hicks: there’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are satan’s little helper.

An Horse are rapidly garnering an influential posse of patrons. First a USA tour supporting Tegan & Sara and now sole support for Death Cab’s Australian tour. Guitarist and nominal frontwoman Kate Cooper restricts her banter, but the tunes are all you’d expect from two of Brisbane’s most accomplished. Damon Cox’s drumming on Warm Hands rolls and gallops, but it’s an unrecorded number where Cooper builds her vocals from soft melancholia to blasts of angry, set-you-back-your-heels intensity that is the highlight of their set.

A banner emblazoned with the multi-coloured pastel artwork of Narrow Stairs heralds Death Cab’s arrival. Tall, dark and handsome, all floppy mop hair and debonair mutton-chop sideburns, Ben Gibbard strides onto stage and the female-dominated crowd immediately goes into collective meltdown even as he launches energetically into the Kerouac-inspired Bixby Canyon Bridge.

Live, Death Cab exude a singular energy that’s not as obvious in studio recordings; it’s as though they’re intent on proving their ability to rock out and deliver a good time. That they’re not simply a bunch of maudlin, introspective indie-hipsters.

As they work through The New Year, Why You’d Want To Live Here and more early in the set, there’s a vigour to the tempo that belies the often-meaty nature of the lyrical content. But, even as Gibbard jauntily swings his guitar from side to side in time with the beat, and the crowd sings along with raucous pleasure to Crooked Teeth, there’s a mildly disjointing rawness to the vocals.

Which is a bit of a shame, because the absent melodiousness prevents Soul Meets Body from really striking the stratosphere. But, when Gibbard slows down for the acoustic simplicity of I Will Follow You Into The Dark, the transformation is stark, the poignancy exquisite.

Alongside material from Plans, songs from new effort Narrow Stairs dominate. I Will Possess Your Heart is possibly the best of them, a 10-minute opus of post rock proportions that derives its power from a repeated bass refrain reminiscent of one of Yo La Tengo’s sprawling epics. Echoing piano builds and intertwines with Chris Walla’s shimmering guitar for long minutes until it all finally give way to Gibbard’s boyish tenor. It’s brilliant, although the way many people blithely sing the stalkerish lyrics is trifle disturbing.

Cath… and Grapevine Fires also play well with the crowd, but as the show heads into the home stretch it’s the one-two of The Sound Of Settling and Marching Bands Of Manhattan ratcheting everyone into emotional overload.

A brief break and the band returns to confuse many by reaching all the way back to 2000’s Something About Airplanes and dragging Your Bruise from the vault. The telephone-buzz pop hooks of 405 then sweep into the lonesome yearning of Your Heart Is An Empty Room before the night concludes on an explosive rendition of Transatlanticism that crescendos on the back of Jason McGerr belting the living daylights out of his kit. Undeniably, Death Cab rock live, but the complaint remains: perhaps a little less would offer more of the heart-piercing poignancy that’s their studio hallmark.